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April 10, 2012

Taser Death: Bobby Merrill, Jr. (Saginaw, MI)

It happened again! This time we learn that the Saginaw Police Department decided to electrocute another UNARMED man to death with their taser guns. Bobby Merrill Jr., 38, was headed to his mother's house when he was met by police cars on Tuesday. [SOURCE]

The Saginaw Police Department said they received a complaint of someone disrupting traffic and jumping on to vehicles and they found Merrill just a few blocks from his destination. Merrill was unarmed and he didn't show the proper level of respect for the unidentified police officers on the scene. As a result the police pumped him several times with 50,000 volts of electricity from their taser guns.

Merrill’s mother, Dorothy Anderson, said she heard about the incident and arrived to see police officers performing CPR on her son. While in police custody Merrill began to have trouble breathing ... and he died.

Anderson wonders if police “did him unjustly” and used unnecessary force during the incident, contributing to Merrill’s death.

The police quickly released information about the criminal past of the victim. Merrill was convicted of charges, ranging in date from 1992 to 2008, including possession of cocaine, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted larceny from a motor vehicle, and assault to do great bodily harm less than murder.

I'm uncertain how this information has any relevance to the actions of the police on Tuesday. The penalty for unruly behavior or resisting arrest should never be death. Yet, here we are again ... an UNARMED man is dead as a result of per-judicial electrocution. Something is simply not right...